


Outed

by fairwinds09



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Team Canada, Winter Olympics, inappropriate behaviour backstage, just skating partners, pyeongchang 2018, skating partners, the ubiquity of fancams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-27 02:42:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13871376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairwinds09/pseuds/fairwinds09
Summary: It starts with a video on a fan's Twitter account. It progresses to include the entirety of the Winter Olympics, 2018.A journey in which very platonic skating partners experiment with getting a little...handsy.





	1. To Err Is Human

**Author's Note:**

> So...I am well aware that I currently have a work in progress, i.e., "Hat Trick." I'm still working on it, I promise. And I probably have no business putting _another_ WIP out in the world in the meantime. But I have been working on this one off and on for about the same amount of time I've been writing "Hat Trick," and it's been a great deal of fun. So I thought I would submit it for your reading pleasure, just to see what you think and whether it's worth pursuing further. 
> 
> (For the record, there is a small amount of overlap between the two fics, mostly in the reactions of Team Canada to the extreme ridiculousness that is Virtue/Moir. I think there's even one line that's exactly the same, verbatim. I am not bothering to change it.)
> 
> This whole thing was spun out of the numerous times that one or the other of these precious darlings felt each other up in public - during practice, backstage while warming up, while waiting to skate. (Really, it did not seem to matter where.) I adored it, as I'm sure the rest of you did as well. At some point I started thinking, "But what if there's a _backstory_ here?" And then this insane little fic was born. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy - drop a line and let me know what you think!

Usually (and by usually, he means at least 99% of the time), he’s the one getting in trouble over the course of their twenty-year career. Not at the beginning, of course, but by the time he’s nineteen or so, it starts happening on a regular basis.

He just really, really sucks at lying to people, as it turns out. Or lying in front of cameras. Or lying in interviews. He sucks at lying in general. He’s just fine as long as he sticks to the prepared script he’s been given (often heavily edited and revised by Tessa), but the second he goes off-book, he inevitably sticks his foot in his mouth.

He can’t seem to help it when it comes to her.

* * *

 

He remembers clearly one of the first times it happened in front of a crowd, at the Trophée Éric Bompard back in 2009. They were so young, when he thinks back on it. So young, and he was so impulsive, and so madly in love with her. She was still shy around him (she was only nineteen, for God’s sake, and so afraid of what people might think). After their free dance, he held her hand the way they’d practiced, smiled up at the ceiling cheek to cheek, and felt her slim fingers move in his. _This is what it means to be happy_ , he thought, and the resultant giddiness never left him that whole entire day.

Which is precisely why, when they ended up in the kiss and cry, he kept touching her, his hand on her shoulder, playing surreptitiously with the soft ends of her hair that escaped from her bun. But it wasn’t the same - he was used to being shoulder to shoulder with her, sharing the same space, and without thinking, he just scooted his chair over until it was flush with hers and wrapped his arm over her shoulders. Immediately, he heard the reaction from the crowd, the vast coo of admiration for such a romantic gesture.

It embarrassed the hell out of him. He knew for a fact that it embarrassed the hell out of her, because she flushed and shot him a sideways glance that looked vaguely uncomfortable from the camera’s angle and positively lethal from _his_ angle. But he was so young, and so impulsive, and he just covered his face with his hands dramatically and tried to pass it off as a joke, even though it obviously was not.

That was one of the first times that she cornered him backstage, after the results were in.

“What was all _that?_ ” she asks snippily. He knows her well enough after twelve years to know that it’s her defensive mode, that she’s embarrassed and nervous, although he’s not sure why.

“I don’t know,” he says, truthfully. “I just wanted to sit by you.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“So you had to pull over your chair in front of an entire crowd of people and a fleet of cameras?”

He shrugs.

“What difference does it make?”

She stares.

“It makes a lot of difference!” she snaps, and he feels himself bristling. Dammit, it wasn’t a big deal then, and it doesn’t have to be one now. She keeps barrelling on, though. “What do you think people assume with things like that?”

She stares him down, and he fights the urge to shuffle his feet like a kid at school, being scolded in front of the class. He’s 21 years old, for Christ’s sake.

“They probably think we like sitting next to each other!” he tells her with a bite in his tone. “Besides, who gives a damn what they think anyway? It’s our business.”

She purses her lips and props both hands on her hips.

“It is their business. At least, as much as we’re public figures, and we’re in the public eye - ”

He cuts her off.

“That still doesn’t make it their business. What happens between you and me? Nobody’s business but ours.”

He looks at her, wide green eyes fringed with impossibly thick lashes, and thinks that he’s full of bullshit, because he doesn’t care whose business belongs to whom as long as he can stare at her like this. As he watches, her porcelain skin flushes the barest tinge of pink.

“All right,” she mutters, a little breathless, and he can’t help but grin in triumph. “Fine. Just...be careful in front of the cameras, okay?”

He tastes victory rich on his tongue as she slips past him to head down the hallway to her dressing room.

“I’m not making any promises,” he says, cocky, and has no idea how prophetic that statement is going to be.

* * *

 Nearly a decade later, their friends seem to tacitly agree that when he’s around Tessa he’s the equivalent of a loose cannon.

Meagan probably summed it up best when she looked at him after he’d done something particularly asinine and lovelorn, and said, loudly, “Dude. You have no chill. Like, zero amounts of chill.”

Chiddy, being the kind, gentle soul that he is, generally keeps his opinions to himself about Scott’s ridiculous behaviour around his skating partner, but even so, Scott’s caught him laughing at them on numerous occasions, a sort of silent, full-body giggle that he tries and fails to hide. (When he glares in an effort to put Chiddy back in his place, it only makes the giggling worse. Much worse.)

For their parts, Eric and Kaitlyn and Andrew seem to be on a joint mission to compile and recite the Anecdotes of Times When Scott Moir Said Something Stupid in an Interview. Apparently the annals are long and filled with detail.

For instance, as they all fool around at the practice rink in Pyeongchang...

“Remember that time you two were doing a commercial thing for Skate Canada, and you had to play that stupid newlywed game, because they totally assume you two are secretly married or something, and you said that thing about her not going to sleep because she’s so restless?”

Scott winces and glances at Tessa reflexively, because that was one of the few times in his life when he thought she really was going to murder him. It had been terrifying, to put it mildly. (To his surprise, it had not helped matters at all when he pointed out that he did in fact have firsthand knowledge about her restless nights, since they shared a bed and all. He slept on the couch for a week after that.)

She sniffs.

“And then you tried to cover for it,” she says, mouth prim but eyes gleaming with mischief. “Something about how you read about it.”

Eric and Kaitlyn and Andrew howl. He thinks they sound remarkably like a pack of tuneless coyotes.

“Yeah, yeah,” Andrew gasps. “Oh God, that was epic. And don’t forget the poached eggs thing - you know, where he brought up romantic dinners and shit that had nothing to do with the question?”

They’re off howling again, and he glances at Tessa to see if the recitations of his stupidity are ticking her off. To his surprise, she’s smiling a bit.

“What?” he asks, and dares to reach down and take her hand. She strokes his wrist with her thumb.

“Just remembering the last time we had poached eggs,” she says softly, and he can’t help but smile back at her. He thinks about sitting in her kitchen in nothing but his boxers, watching her fiddle with eggs on the ancient gas range in her condo, his oversized Leafs shirt dwarfing her slim frame. She says it’s the only thing she can cook, which is not an exaggeration, but he’s of the opinion she does a damn good job with her one specialty.

It probably didn’t hurt that he ate them with her perched on his lap the entire time, but that’s a different part of the story.

“Yeah,” he murmurs back, and nuzzles her temple. That’s another thing he routinely gets in trouble for, because in the age of the iPhone, everyone and their uncle seems to have a photo of him nuzzling Tessa. Or kissing her cheek. Or hugging her. It’s unfair, really. He misses the good old days, when all he had to worry about was the bulky news cameras.

She leans her head against his with a quiet little sigh, which is a very nice change from years past. Old Tessa would always pull away, usually with a shy, apologetic little look that said louder than words that she was worried about the cameras, about perceptions, about the media, and that she’d kiss him senseless backstage later to make up for it. Ever since they came back from retirement (and had The Talk), New Tessa seems just fine with public nuzzling. And cheek kisses. And hugs. In fact, she actually initiates them every once in a blue moon, which sends his heart careening in his chest.

(This girl owns him, and he knows it. God, does he know it.)

They skate slowly over to the team box, where the Three Musketeers of bad jokes primarily made at Scott Moir’s expense are playing some weird game on Andrew’s phone, and only then does he hear Gabby’s sharp intake of breath.

“Oh my God,” he hears her mutter. “Oh my _God_.”

Tessa stiffens beside him.

“What?” he asks, possibly with more asperity than the occasion seems to warrant. He senses Tessa giving him her patented _be nice_ look.

“I don’t...I, umm…well…” Gabby seems at a loss for words, so much so that she turns and looks at Patrick with a desperate sort of _help me_ expression in her eyes. Chiddy steps forward, takes her phone, scans it for a second, and then erupts into a silent giggling fit.

“ _What?!_ ” Scott snaps, because clearly he’s involved somehow, and he doesn’t particularly look forward to another round of observations about how pathetic he is over his extraordinarily gorgeous and talented partner. (Even if they all happen to be true.)

Chiddy, still shaking with laughter, shoves the phone at him, and he swears his heart skips a beat. Because there, right there, in front of God and everybody on some idiot’s Twitter feed, is a video of him during training, casually grabbing Tessa’s ass.

He closes his eyes. _Shit_. She’s really going to kill him this time. Murder him and hide the body, because while New Tessa seems fine with fairly platonic gestures of affection in public, and has no problem whatsoever with practically fucking him on the ice during their performances, this is something different. This is...real.

She grabs his arm, digging her nails in a little.

“What is it?” she asks, sounding more than a little concerned. “Let me - _oh_.”

He doesn’t open his eyes, just lets her take the phone from his hand and look her fill. He’s only got a few more minutes left on this earth anyway. No sense fighting her on it.

“What...where...I don’t…” she stammers, and he feels his stomach sink. She’s going to be angry, and hurt, and he doesn’t know how they found this, doesn’t know how to change this, how to fix it. It’s not fair, he thinks furiously. He gets it, that people are fascinated by the forbidden love angle, and that at least half the time it’s his fault because he acts like a lovesick idiot around her. He’s bad at hiding his emotions, always has been. But this…

She sucks in a deep breath, and he braces himself. He hates it when she’s hurt. Or embarrassed, truly embarrassed. He hates that it’s his fault.

“I’m sorry, T,” he mutters, and opens his eyes, looks away. He doesn’t want to see the look of disappointment on her face, because it’s officially the worst. It makes something split open, hot and aching, inside his chest.

“Hmmm,” she says noncommittally, which is...puzzling, to say the least. “Well. All right, then.”

And then she calmly hands the phone back to Chiddy, smiles sweetly at him, and skates off to the other end of the rink. He has no idea what to think.

“What were you _thinking?!_ ” he hisses as soon as she’s out of earshot. Chiddy shrugs and raises his eyebrows.

“It’s not really a well-kept secret, you know,” he points out in a sort of diplomatic tone. Scott glares.

“She doesn’t want it out, about us.”

Chiddy gives him a very patient look.

“I think you passed that point right around the time you did your first interview together,” he says, and barely manages to suppress his grin.

Scott seriously considers yanking off his boot and throwing it at his friend’s head.

“You know, it would be _great_ if you’d show me stupid shit like this _before_ she sees it. Might reduce my chances of getting my throat cut with her blade the next time we’re on the ice, eh?”

Chiddy snorts.

“Don’t worry, she won’t kill you until after the Games are over. I think that gives you what, thirteen more days?”

He reaches over and cuffs his former friend on the shoulder.

“Very funny. Ha ha. I’m going to go figure out exactly how deep the shit I’m in is - no thanks to you.”

He skates backwards, dreading the conversation he’s headed towards.

“And in case you were wondering, you’re uninvited for Christmas this year,” he calls out in Chiddy’s direction. “And Canada Day. And the Ilderton Fair. And anything else I can think of.”

He turns around and goes to find Tessa with Chiddy’s soft laughter pealing out behind him.

_Asshat._

When he catches up to her, she’s practicing turns, looking positively serene. He grits his teeth.

“So…” he begins, slowly, “about that…”

She looks at him very seriously.

“I think we need to work on that first set of twizzles in the free,” she says, as if the whole thing had never happened. “They felt shaky the last time we did them. It didn’t feel right.”

He stares at her.

“Tess - ” he starts, but she blinks quickly, not fluttering her lashes (she’s very good at that), but the rapid one-two-three blink he’s learned over twenty years means that she’s not going to talk about it until she’s good and ready.

“All right,” he says. He’ll wait her out, even though it’s fucking miserable. “Let’s set it up.”

He has no idea what she’s thinking, which, sadly, is more common than the general public might imagine.

Mostly, he’s just sure it’s nothing good.


	2. To Forgive...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tessa's reaction is not what he expected. Not at _all_ what he expected. 
> 
> Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly what the rest of Team Canada expected either, and they seem to have no intention of letting him live it down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your lovely responses to Chapter 1! This fandom has been so much fun to interact with - you all are the best! Also, can I just take a moment to point out that there is SO MUCH good fic out there right now. So much. I am privileged to be writing alongside the amazing authors in this fandom. 
> 
> Also, I would like to apologise for taking forever to update this (and Hat Trick). Real life has been insane lately. Fortunately, I have a couple of days of freedom coming up in which to write. (And read other authors' awesome fic. And watch 15 million Virtue/Moir clips on Twitter. It's a mood, y'all.)
> 
> Anyway. Here's the next bit of How Tessa and Scott Can't Keep Their Hands Off Each Other™. Hope you enjoy!

They’re backstage, warming up for the short program of the team event, and he’s fucking nervous. It’s not the individual event, but in a way this is even worse, knowing that their score could carry the team, or not. Knowing that this is Chiddy’s chance for the gold, that they can put it in his hands if they do their jobs right. Knowing that this is the last first time he’s going to step foot on Olympic ice to compete with Tessa.

He stretches on the floor, trying to calm the quivering of his stomach. The nerves won’t leave him alone, though, and he breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, trying to use all the strategies the B2Ten coach taught them. It doesn’t seem to be helping much, but he’s trying hard to refocus. Surely that counts for something.

He feels rather than sees her walk up behind him. Over twenty years, he’s become so attuned to her he thinks he could pick her out of a crowd blindfolded, his senses somehow knowing she’s there instinctively. He likes to think she could do the same with him.

She gets closer, until he can feel the warmth of her body all along his left side. She puts a hand on his shoulder, rubs for a minute.

“Okay?” she asks, and if he ever could forgotten why he loves her, it’s a moment like this that would bring it all back. Tessa Virtue, ladies and gentlemen - still the kindest woman he’s ever met.

“Yeah,” he says, but it doesn’t sound convincing even to his ears. “Just, y’know...a lot.”

She nods and skims her fingers along his shoulderblade.

“We can do this,” she says, simply, and he believes her. (He always believes her.)

She smiles very softly and moves as if she’s stepping away, and then it happens. He almost can’t believe it - is, in fact, convinced that he’s hallucinating things because he’s so nervous. It’s got to be really bad if he’s hallucinating.

But no - it happened. It really, actually happened. Tessa Jane McCormick Virtue, in whose mouth butter would not melt, who off the ice is the queen of cool, composed propriety, just reached down and smacked his ass. In the warm-up room. Which, while not exactly on camera, is still semi-public.

He’s reeling from it, but has the good sense to keep his mouth shut. She, on the other hand, tilts her head just a bit, smiles at something behind her, and then serenely drifts over to the other corner of the mat to start her stretches.

He’s stunned.

It doesn’t hit him until a good 30 seconds later, at which point he looks back over his shoulder and realises exactly what was going on. There’s an NBC camera pointed directly at them, one of those small, low-def spy cameras that try to catch everything the athletes are up to backstage. Which means, of course, that his partner deliberately grabbed his ass, on camera, for the entire world to see.

He has no fucking idea what to think.

* * *

Eric and Andrew accost him the next morning, phones in hand.

“Did you _see_ this?!” Andrew demands, and Scott narrows his eyes at Andrew’s phone. _What fresh hell is this_ is really the first phrase that comes to mind right now.

“See what?” he says, sounding as grouchy as he possibly can.

“ _This,_ ” they say in unison, which is really fucking creepy, and then Andrew clicks on something, adjusts something, and there it is. The video. A grainy, out-of-focus shot of Tessa Virtue in the warm-up room, calmly slapping his ass.

On purpose.

He isn’t sure whether to do a fist pump or just sink quietly into the floor.

“Anything you want to explain right now, Moir?” Eric asks, glee radiating through his voice. Scott rolls his eyes.

“It was an accident,” he says, although this does not sound at all convincing. (He really needs to work on lying better.)

“An accident,” Andrew echoes, eyebrows raised. Neither one of them seems to be buying this.

“Yeah, totally an accident,” he says with a bit more insistence. He wonders if Tessa’s seen the video. He wonders what _she_ thought.

“Hmm,” Eric says, lips pursed. “Lots of...ah, _accidents_ happening around here lately.”

Scott turns and heads down the hallway to the elevator, fully aware that the two of them are trailing behind, matching idiotic grins on their faces.

“I mean, you two have always been handsy, but this is a little extra, don’t you think?” Andrew asks. He sounds unbearably smug.

“Extra?” He punches the down button with slightly more force than is really necessary. He does not _need_ this shit before he’s had coffee. And breakfast. And some more sleep.

“Uh-huh. You two keep this up, the entire world is gonna figure out you’re together before the Games are over,” Eric points out. Scott grits his teeth.

“No one is figuring out anything,” he says in a very calm, very rational tone of voice that he’s quite proud of. Without looking at either of his two remarkably nosy friends, he jabs the button for the lobby and contemplates the ceiling. “Ice dancing is a very tactile sport. Accidents happen. End of story.”

He’s not looking, but he’s quite certain that the two of them are sharing a Look.

“Whatever you say,” Eric grins. And then the elevator stops on the third floor, and he thinks this morning really could not get any worse, because there is Tessa, fresh-faced and devastatingly beautiful, waiting to get on.

“Morning, Tessa,” Andrew and Eric chime with unnecessary vigour. She smiles, her usual vague, slightly sleepy early morning smile.

“Morning,” she says, and steps on. He can smell a faint waft of strawberries from her shampoo and the vanilla of her lotion. He swallows, hard.

“Hey, T,” he says, going for casual; he can hear Andrew snickering in the corner. She stands next to him, close enough that her sleeve is brushing his, and then she tilts her head so it’s resting against his shoulder. It’s hardly something new. In fact, it’s something she does all the time back home, but he’s hyperaware of the two asshats behind him, which makes him unusually tense.

“You sleep okay?” she asks through a yawn. She’s incredibly cute when she yawns, her little tip-tilted nose wrinkling just a little.

“Yeah,” he says. “You?”

She nods. “Kaitlyn and I stayed up for a little bit, but not too late. Didn’t want to be tired for the free today.”                                                                                 

He decides to hell with it and slides an arm around her shoulders.

“We’ll be great tonight,” he promises her. She nods again and lets her head fall into the crook of his shoulder, where it just seems to naturally belong. He’s vaguely aware that there’s a shuffling sound behind him - no doubt Andrew and Eric having a field day over that stupid video again. He shoots them the bird behind his back, which just sets them off even more.

Finally, his prayers are answered, because the elevator lands on the lobby floor, and they all pile out for breakfast. He desperately wants to hold her hand on the way over to the big buffet tables, but he’s not sure he can get away with it, and he doesn’t feel like having her pull away. Not this morning, not when she’s got some _thing_ going on with them and being caught on video in compromising positions. He still has no idea what to make of that.

He forgets about it when she turns and grabs his sleeve with excitement.

“Look, they have kiwi!” she exclaims, and tugs him after her to a large display of fresh fruit. As usual, he’ll follow anywhere she cares to go.

Behind him, though, he can hear Andrew stage whisper, “Watch it, Moir!!” and Eric’s accompanying giggle.

He wonders how much trouble he’ll get into if he locks two members of Team Canada into a broom closet indefinitely.

Surely it’ll be worth it.


End file.
